Feb 28, 2012

The Pretty Amazing lipcolours are a cross between a lipstick and a gloss - the creaminess and shine of a lipgloss combined with rich pigmentation and colour payoff like a lipstick. Continuing with what is turning out to be a series on the Bare Minerals
Pretty Amazing Lipcolours, the shade I am reviewing today is Confidence.

Bare Minerals Pretty Amazing Lipcolour in Confidence is described as a mauve-pink colour, but it looks like a darker colour in the tube/on the applicator. On swatches, though, the colour is a brighter mauve-pink.

I have to admit, the colour seemed a bit too bright for me initially, but while it might not seem so in the photo, it does brighten my face up. Perhaps because of the mauve tones in it, this is a brighter pink that I can actually wear without looking washed out (a common problem for me with my darker skin colour!). The lipcolour seems more pink than mauve, though, on my lips. Wear it on dull, dreary days for an instant pop of colour without going the pure neon route :P Here's me and my Confidence :D :D

Bare Minerals Pretty Amazing Lipcolours are creamy, opaque, nondrying, and pretty longlasting. Confidence is no exception to this rule. I typically apply lipcolours using a lip brush, but the applicator provided does a fantastic job of applying the colour - or just dab it on with your fingers to provide a sheerer wash of colour. Another favorite for me from the Bare Minerals range, Confidence is a shade that should work for any skin colour.

Feb 27, 2012

A high-potency, featherweight lip color that lasts up to six hours, this product provides medium to full coverage and high color pay-off. Long-wearing color is formulated with a new generation of polymer. Shiny silicon creates brilliance of a gloss.

Categorized by mood, the collection includes:

"Jolis Matins" or "Pretty Morning" - a range of ready-to-wear, fresh day shades that add brilliance to the lips due to the precious mother-of-pearls.

Feb 19, 2012

A couple of days back, we decided to get our lazy selves outdoors and took a quick trip to Monterey - Big Sur and the 17-mile drive - nothing really too out of the way of the usual tourist places nearby. While in Monterey, though, we read about the Monarch Grove Butterfly Sanctuary in Pacific Grove and we just had to check out the place.

What's special about this place are butterflies - and there just so many of them, they hang in clumps from tall pine trees! Every year from October to February,, monarch butterflies migrate into the Pacific Grove area to tide over the winter. How these butterflies travel nearly 2000 miles and know to find the way to this place every year is one of nature's many mysteries (scientists believe they follow the earth's magnetic fields), but we seemed to have landed there at the right time :D

It is quite easy to miss noticing these butterflies, especially if you land there early morning, since they hang in clumps from really tall trees - clumping together helps them stay warm, and they start flying around by around noon when the sun is out with its warmth. The butterflies with their wings closed look like dried brownish leaves and blend in with their surroundings. I was lucky to be able to zoom in with my camera to see a bit more clearly. I added a few more photos, but if seeing butterflies up close creeps you out, you would be better off not scrolling down :P :P

While I amn't too fond of insects in general, these were quite far away, and it's quite an amazing sight to see so many butterflies together. The photos might seem a bit too close for comfort, but in reality the only way you can see them so close is if you get to watch them through telescopes. If you are in the Monterey area during October-February, do take the time to go to the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary - you will definitely come back a bit awed :)

Directions: Are a bit iffy, and it's best to just look for the Butterfly Grove Inn that is right next to this small grove.

1073 Lighthouse Avenue,

Pacific Grove,

CA 93950 USA

Best time to go: October-February (12 - 3 there will be volunteers there with telescopes, so it's easier to spot the butterflies). Wear some warm clothes, is quite cold under the trees. Oh, and it's a $1000 fine if you "molest a butterfly in anyway."

So..I am no daring baker, but I do love a good warm fresh-baked brownie, so what does a lazy cook like me do? Get a box of Ghirardelli's Ultimate Fudge Brownie mix - follow the instructions - and in about 40 minutes, I am on my way to foodie heaven :D :D

And that was the best part of my weekend...what about you? How was your weekend?

Feb 18, 2012

Inglot eyeshadow: Pearl 446
Colour:Purple-Plum with a hint of brown to it and a pearl finish to it. It really doesn't have shimmer particles in it, but the pearlescent finish gives it a lovely shimmery finish to it.How I use it: As an all-over lid colour, either on it's own or darkened with a matte black shadow just on the outer corners.

Inglot Pearl 446 Eyeshadow - Review

This is a shade I love using - it's a beautiful colour and fits in perfectly with my usual single-eyeshadow routine. Used on it's own (without a primer or a base), the colour does show up and while the staying power won't be much, it definitely doesn't crease or fly around. With a good base, the shadow stays on all day, and a base of black or plum really brings out the colour that you see in the pan. A definite must-have from Inglot.

Inglot Pearl 446 Eyeshadow - Swatches/FOTD

Swatch on my hand without a primer/base. On my eyes, I used UD Rockstar eyeliner along my upper lashline and used Inglot Pearl 446 to smudge the liner and all over my eyelid. A lighter-skinned person, this would show up as a darker eyeshadow (check here for swatches on Temptalia), but with my skin tone, I can use this easily any time :D

I remember having a conversation about a year back with a nail-obsessed friend of mine, S. She was telling me about how she was searching for this one particular shade that she saw on another lady - it was the perfect pink "like how we see in magazines, Rads" with an amazing glossy finish to it. Needless to say, she bought her way through a lot of hopefuls without getting that elusive glossy finish that she so desperately sought. What both of us didn't realize then was that what we needed was not a shade but a coat - a top coat! A year older and many blog centuries wiser, I found out the answer in the many awesome nail polish blogs out there. A quick run to Target, and I got myself the Sally Hansen Super Shine Top Coat - it's an inexpensive drugstore brand and Sally Hansen is quite a popular nailcare brand, and I bought it on an impulse :D

How to Use the Sally Hansen Super Shine Nail Finishing Top Coat

I use it as instructed, over my fully dried nail polish, and allow it to air dry completely. I don't really apply it under my nail tips, but I do carry over the product right over the edge of the nail rather than just stopping at the edge. The Sally Hansen Super Shine Top Coat gives a fabulous glossy shine and depth to the nail colour. Plus, it really does stretch the lasting power of my nail polishes to about 1 week at least. I do an enormous amount of typing and the occasional chopping/dishwashing work in the kitchen, so there's no way I can get away with perfect manicures for more than a day or two, but with this on, if I am a little careful, I can stretch the wear time to about a week.

I have not tried any other top coat, so I really cannot comment on how well this fares in comparison, but it does what it claims - gives a glossy effect and prevents the polish from chipping - so this is a definite winner for me. Do give it a try if you are on the lookout for a good inexpensive top coat :) The one fault that I do find with this is I have to ensure I take a somewhat generous amount of the product on the brush and apply it gently, otherwise it tends to wipe off/dissolve the nail polish a bit.

Burt's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm (in a tin) - The original. The best. And still your favorite. Our must-have balms have been playing in purses and pockets since 1991. Beeswax conditions skin, while antioxidant Vitamin E moisturizes, seals in hydration with Beeswax, and refreshes with Peppermint Oil.

Since I have a perpetual problem with dry lips, I am always stocking up on lip balms and butters of all kinds and shapes. I always have at least one of the Burt's Bees lip balm tubes lying around in my bag, but this time when I went to replenish my stockpile of balms, I found this tin alongside the usual tubes. It looked so cute, I just had to pick this up instead. The Burt's Bees Beeswax Lip Balm Tin has the same product that comes packaged in a tube, but while the two versions cost the same, you get the double the amount of product in the tin (8.5 g) than when you buy a tube (4.25 g). Talk about something looking cute AND being economical :D

The Burt's Bees Beeswax lip balm, just like all of their other lip balms that I have tried, works fabulously on my always-dry lips. It has a tingly-refreshing minty taste to it, and while ordinarily I hate mint (except in toothpastes :P), I like this balm so much, I just put up with the minty flavor. While I would love to gloat about how I got this superadorable tin and saved myself some money, after a while I realized that this isn't the most useful packaging if I am anywhere outside. I don't feel comfortable using my fingers to apply this (goodness knows who touched that shopping cart before me!!), and I am not going to be walking around with Q-tips and hand-sanitizers just to apply a lip balm :-| So yes, this is a fabulous product, and you get a lot more product than the tube version, but this is best kept at home (at least for me).

Bare Minerals Pretty Amazing Lip Colors have a simple, black tube packaging and a flocked applicator that truly deserves all the hype that Bare Minerals adds to it. While I usually prefer using a brush to apply lip color, I like that this applicator does almost as good a job of tracing the lip shape. Awesome staying power (doesn't survive through a meal, though) and
doesn't dry out my lips either (doesn't have any moisturizing properties
- use a lip balm for that) combined with the satiny-matte effect it gives, this is definitely a great product. The colour itself - Bare Minerals Pretty Amazing Lip Color in Savvy - is a brownish color that has maybe the slightest hint of pink to it. It is quite opaque and doesn't need a lip liner underneath it.

While this isn't a color I would reach for that often, I find it a nice combination to use with darker eyes. I also like to use it slightly sheered out when I want just a light coverage of my unevenly pigmented lips :D The more opaque layer I apply, the more brown it seems to pull on me, but it might be something to do with my lip colour too. Anyhow, this is how Bare Minerals Pretty Amazing Lip Color in Savvy looks on me...

Yes To Carrots (and Tomatoes and Blueberries and Cucumbers) features a range of natural hair and skincare products packed with vitamin-rich organic fruits and veggies. With all this goodness in them, I just had to pick up something from this range, and on one of my trips to Target, I bought the Yes to Carrots Super Rich Body Butter. The Yes to Carrots range is meant for normal to dry skin and hair and uses moisturizing ingredients like carrots, shea butter, and sweet almond oil.

Target had these smaller/travel-sized Yes To Carrots Super Rich Body Butter with a $1 coupon on top. Most of the tubs in the store had these coupons ripped off from the top, but I did manage to find 3 with the coupons on. I had an extreme-couponing moment when the person at the counter made a mistake and took $3 off the bill (the coupon is actually meant to be redeemed with the next purchase) :D :D

Yes To Carrots Super Rich Body Butter - Review

This soft, creamy body butter is quite easy to apply and absorbs fast enough for a body butter. It has a faint fragrance to it, though I am not sure what I would describe it as. It's not floral or fruity - just a clean smell that I doubt would be offensive to anyone.

In terms of moisturizing power, I would call this a light body butter. While it does a decent job of providing moisture when applied, I do find this a lighter body butter that I need to reapply at the end of the day. I do have very dry skin, and while reapplying is not that big of an issue with me, I do expect a little more from a product that claims to be a super-rich bodybutter. This product would be perfect, though, for a normal-skinned person and/or for use during the summers, and it certainly is not greasy or oily. Plus, it is filled with a lot of natural ingredients, and I have to love it for that!

Feb 14, 2012

When applied properly, foundation can take skin from looking dull and uneven to healthy and flawless. Foundations, like almost all makeup, though have their own limitations and drawbacks - while a heavy foundation might be perfect for a certain occasion, it might be just too much for another. Scroll down to read some tips and tricks to get the most effect with this makeup product.

#1. Skin colour changes with the seasons - darker in the summer and going paler in the winters. To change the shade of your foundation, mix a bit of tinted mositurizer.
#2. So you got this sheer foundation that you love, but want a thicker coverage one day? Just mix a small amount of fine powder with the foundation to give it a heavier feel. Mixing concealer with the foundation is another way to get more coverage with the same foundation.
#3. Mix light-reflecting foundation with your regular body moisturizer to give your hands and legs that extra sheen and glow.
#4. If you don't have a concealer, use a brush to pick up foundation that has collected around the edges of the bottle (that's usually thicker) - while not really the same coverage as a concealer, this thicker foundation would work quite well too.

And the toss? Water-based foundations last about 1 year and oil-based foundations about 1-1/2 years - so toss them out if it doesn't feel quite right. This a general rule, though, so check your product label for the actual expiry dates.

Feb 13, 2012

Valentine's day has never been a big occasion in our house - sure, I always remind my husband to get me a gift for the day, and he does his part by listening to whatever I told him and promptly disregarding it :-| :-| I give up and move on to asking for my birthday gift. This year is no different, and I am once again left with no choice but to start my campaign for the "birthday gift" bright and early in February (my birthday is in June). Apart from attempts at scoring a gift, though, I really don't like all the fuss associated with the day - the colured hearts and singing teddy bears that pop everywhere. I did pick up these earrings, though, and quite contrary to my proclaimed dislike to all things "heart," these I quite like.

I picked up these heart-shaped earrings with a vintage feel to them from Target.

I have wanted to try the Crabtree and Evelyn hand creams for ages, but they aren't sold in India and I had to be content with just staring at their website for ages. Now that I am in the US, and there's a Crabtree and Evelyn outlet at my favorite mall, this is my newest skincare obsession. Wanting a more nourishing hand cream for the winters, I picked up the Gardener's Ultra-moisturising hand cream this time.

Packaged in the vintage-looking tube that is so typical of so many of the Crabtree and Evelyn products, this is a slightly heavier cream (than the Rosewater Hand Therapy cream from Crabtree and Evelyn that I have tried earlier) yet absorbs easily and leaves hands moisturized and soft without a greasy residue. With fragrance notes of fresh green clover, lavender, sage rosemary and thyme, the smell is citrusy and clean, and this is a product guys can use just as easily as girls - and the smell isn't too strong, either. While I stay with greasy, heavy creams for overnight hand therapy, for the day-time I need a moisturizing but non-greasy hand cream, and this fits the bill. A perfect pick for the winters and/or if you are are prone to dry skin. Do give it a try the next time you are at a Crabtree outlet :)

Feb 12, 2012

Chanel Le Vernis Frisson is part of the Roses Ultimes de Chanel Makeup Collection which features limited edition shades of 4 nail polishes and 6 lipglosses. Chanel Le Vernis in Frisson reminds me of a really light strawberry smoothie - milky, creamy, and pink - with very fine gold shimmer scattered throughout that gives it a beautiful golden hue.

This photo was taken in a slightly more white light, and this is the actual base colour of the nail polish (I had to tweak the photo a bit to show that!). The golden shimmer in it, though, gives Frisson a golden/peach hue to it while still keeping it a soft pink.

It took me 4 coats to get a complete opaque finish, but you could wear it sheerer too. The formula is nonstreaky, and I have never seen shimmer done so beautifully in a nail polish ever - I am normally firmly antishimmer, but this I love! To me this beautiful pink nailpolish is spring in a bottle ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Feb 11, 2012

MAC's tongue-in-cheek take on something as mundane as shopping and cooking - delicious assortment of eye shadows, mouthwateringly Kissable Lipcolour and Cremeblend Blushes and savoury shades for the eyes and lips that make the perfect recipe for kitchen kouture. Here's a look at some of the products in the collection.

While I didn't buy anything from this collection, I did get a few product swatches.

There were at least a million people there and it was like walking into another world with all that dancing and singing, so I am hoping I got all the names and swatches all lined up correctly (:tremble: :tremble: I fear the wrath of the MAC fans!). Good thing I didn't bother taking any more swatches, I guess :D

Seen first on models during the Chanel 2012 Spring Ready-To-Wear show, Chanel Le Vernis in Attraction created quite a buzz online, with quite a lot of beauty editors touting as the next nail colour - quite like Particuliere. Chanel released this nail polish online last week as part of the Roses Ultimes de Chanel collection, and since they had a complimentary shipping offer going on (guess that's Chanel's idea of a sale!), I managed to pick it up along with Frisson.

Chanel Le Vernis in Attraction is a pearly white colour - more than pearly, to me it resembles the luminous inside of the shell that reflects tints of greens and greys and yellow. It has a pearlescent finish to it, and depending on the light you are viewing it in, it shows tints of grey, yellow, or pink (more on that in a bit).

I am not very talented when it comes to nail polish application, but I do find the Chanel formula quite easy to apply. This dries very fast and takes about 3 layers to get a completely opaque look. I couldn't get a completely nonstreaky application, but I could be just as much to blame for that as the nail polish :D Here's how it looks on my nails:

My thoughts on the Chanel Le Vernis in Attraction

I am not a big fan of these kind of finishes - prefer the creams more - so I started off with a bias right away with this polish. Because of the pearlescent finish to this white nail polish, it gives off a yellowish hue under incandescent lighting which I don't particularly care for (blame it on my Indian roots - it just reminds me of turmeric stains :P). Under normal lighting though, for instance outdoors, it's a beautiful pearly colour, and I quite like it when it picks up a pink tint. The quality is what one would expect from Chanel, so no complaints on that front. Among the nail polishes Chanel has released this spring, though, June (and May) remains my favorite.